The big difference between omnichannel and multichannel marketing is that omnichannel requires strategic alignment between channels, departments, tech tools, and data.
Multichannel marketing is simpler in scope. It employs multiple channels, but without integrating them so they work together.
At Belkins, we recommend taking an omnichannel approach to marketing if you want to achieve any of the following:
- Provide a seamless customer experience across all touchpoints.
- Optimize each channel to its fullest potential.
- Unify data into a single source of truth.
In this article, we illustrate the capabilities of each marketing approach for different industries along with examples and real-life case studies.
What is multichannel marketing?
Multichannel marketing refers to marketing efforts that use multiple platforms to connect with potential customers. These normally include email, social media, websites, trade shows, and conferences. Each channel operates independently, and messaging is tailored to a specific format and audience.
Benefits of multichannel marketing
Multichannel marketing offers several advantages over a single channel:
- Expanded audience reach: Your company connects with a wider range of potential customers by catering to different preferences for consuming information and interacting with brands.
- Adaptability: Allows your business to experiment with different platforms, identifying which ones generate the most engagement from your target audience before investing in a fully integrated strategy.
- Enhanced brand recognition: Maintaining a multichannel presence builds brand awareness and keeps your brand top-of-mind.
Overall, multichannel marketing casts a wider net than you could with single-channel tactics. It allows you to learn and adapt to changing customer behaviors while laying a stronger foundation in an increasingly competitive digital space.
When does it make sense to use multichannel marketing?
Multichannel marketing is great for organizations looking to diversify their outreach without committing to deep integration. It's useful for 2 situations:
- Testing new channels: Explore various platforms to identify which ones reach the ideal audience, drive the most engagement, or result in the most booked calls, all without extensive resources for full integration.
- Targeting specific audiences: Best for smaller businesses targeting audiences invested in a handful of platforms. They can validate their sales model, secure initial clients, and build a foundation for refining their messaging based on each channel's strengths.
Multichannel marketing allows young or small companies to test different methods and gather insights to guide future strategies.
What are the core components of a multichannel strategy?
Every multichannel marketing strategy includes the following core components that dictate its effectiveness.
Customer experience
From the customer's point of view, multichannel feels much like a single channel, as their initial and continued engagement exists through a primary channel. For this reason, customers could potentially encounter inconsistent messaging or service if they’re engaged through different platforms. The inconsistency often leads to confusion when channels and messaging don't align well in terms of branding or communication style.
Engagement
While multichannel strategies typically increase overall engagement by reaching audiences across multiple platforms, they also easily overwhelm customers when they're not managed cohesively. Mixed messages that don't address customer needs end up diminishing the impact of your outreach efforts.
Overall business performance
Increasing the number of touchpoints drives early sales; however, inefficiencies and missed opportunities arise when channels aren't coordinated throughout the buyer journey.
To maximize the benefits of a multichannel approach, focus on refining strategies and providing consistent messaging across all your chosen platforms. This alignment in brand messaging creates a smoother customer experience, reduces headaches, costs, and missed opportunities, and increases ROI over the long term.
What tools, tech, and processes are needed for multichannel marketing?
Any successful digital marketing strategy requires a combination of specialized tools, tech, and processes. With multichannel marketing, there's simply more to manage. Here are the essential investments for an effective multichannel marketing strategy:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems: These platforms form the backbone of multichannel marketing. Options like HubSpot or Salesforce provide basic management of customer interactions across all your chosen channels. A well-implemented CRM system makes it easy to track customer touchpoints, store data, and readily gain insights for things like analysis and personalized messaging.
- Marketing automation tools: Depending on your chosen channels, you'll need specific tools — such as ActiveCampaign or Reply — to schedule and manage campaigns. These tools automate repetitive tasks, schedule messages, and bring consistency to your efforts across multiple platforms. Without marketing automation tools in place, the increasing costs of time and resources makes scaling up your marketing efforts unrealistic.
- Analytics tools: Testing and refining each channel means tracking performance metrics. Analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Clarity, Dreamdata, or Adobe Marketo let you measure campaigns and user behavior to help you identify top-performing channels, and make data-driven decisions.
These tools make it possible to inform your multichannel strategy and provide a more seamless user experience. However, having your tech run in the background won't do much for your marketing efforts. You'll need to dedicate resources to evaluate and update your toolkit regularly.
Multichannel marketing example campaign
Here we'll explore an example of how a small-to-medium business (SMB) might successfully transition from a single-channel approach to a multichannel one.
Commonly, SMBs begin marketing with a sole focus on email campaigns. As the companies start to expand, they recognize a need to broaden their reach to engage with a wider audience.
Here's how the strategy typically evolves:
- Email marketing: The foundation of their initial efforts, delivering targeted content directly to subscribers' inboxes.
- Pay-per-click advertising: Introduced to tap into new audience segments and increase brand visibility across popular platforms.
- Blog content: Developed to establish thought leadership in their space, improve website SEO, and provide helpful resources for potential customers.
Integrating these additional channels, an SMB is now able to:
- Expand their audience reach significantly
- See some improvement in email campaign performance
- Begin increasing their customer base
- Maintain greater brand recognition in their industry
This kind of multichannel approach allows SMBs to meet their audience where they’re most active. It also presents many more touchpoints (opportunities) for engagement and conversion. The result is greater consistency in leads and sales.
However, complications and new issues arise over time. SMB sales and marketing teams remain siloed. Prospects are barraged with inconsistent messages. Data isn’t logged or retrieved efficiently.
The added headaches and costs end up in a moment of disappointment when businesses see that while their marketing efforts have gained steam, scaling isn’t realistic under these conditions.
That's because consistency is not enough. To take your business to the next level, you need consistency and efficiency.
What is omnichannel marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is a sophisticated approach to sales and customer engagement. It involves strategic interaction with potential clients across multiple communication platforms to generate leads and schedule meetings. By leveraging various channels — including email, phone calls, social media, SMS, direct mail, and other complimentary channels — businesses connect with prospects through their preferred methods of communication.
You can think of omnichannel marketing as one that builds upon and improves the multichannel concept. It's the result of the natural progression of using multiple channels by coordinating them to optimize the user experience at every touchpoint throughout the buyer journey.
The omnichannel approach to marketing requires a high degree of strategic alignment to create a seamless customer experience across all platforms, making every interaction — both online and offline — relevant and consistent.
Benefits of omnichannel marketing
Implementing an omnichannel strategy offers several advantages over multi- or single-channel marketing:
- Unified customer experience: Consistent messaging across all channels maintains brand voice, capitalizes on past interactions through integrated data, and increases engagement throughout the entire buyer journey.
- Improved customer insights: By leveraging data from all touchpoints, omnichannel marketing brings a more comprehensive view of customer behavior and preferences. This allows for the development of specific KPIs to drive more engagement at each stage of the customer journey.
- Higher conversion rates: A cohesive experience and ongoing optimization for each buyer journey stage leads to steadily increased conversions across all channels.
When should you choose omnichannel?
An omnichannel approach makes sense for several different scenarios:
- When your organization aims to provide a superior customer experience with increased retention rates.
- If you want to maintain a competitive edge by aggregating data across different channels to gain greater insights into customer behavior.
- When your company is prepared to embrace a growth mindset, invest in significant interdepartmental and cultural shifts, and develop expertise in integrated communication tools and troubleshooting.
To see success with your omnichannel strategy, your business must be willing to adapt its organizational structure and invest in the necessary technologies. This requires a significant investment, commitment to continuous improvement, and a focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences.
What differentiates an omnichannel marketing strategy?
Omnichannel marketing strategies stand out for their comprehensive and integrated nature. Below, we go into each differentiator that makes omnichannel marketing uniquely effective.
Customer experience
Omnichannel, as compared to multi and single-channel strategies, improves the customer experience by providing:
- Fluid and personalized interactions based on previous engagements
- Seamless transitions between channels without loss of context or continuity
- Consistent brand messaging across all touchpoints
Engagement
Omnichannel engagement surpasses that of multichannel approaches due to:
- Channel assignment to specific stages of the buyer journey
- Tailored messages delivered at every stage
- Reduction of irrelevant messages bombarding prospects simultaneously
Overall business performance
By integrating data analytics that allows for continuous refinement, you can achieve several benefits:
- Higher customer retention rates
- Increased sales per transaction
- Improved overall satisfaction scores
- Reduced overall campaign cost and increased marketing ROI
What tools, tech, and processes are needed to implement omnichannel?
The successful implementation of any omnichannel marketing campaign requires a combination of tools, technologies, and processes. Here's what you'll need:
- Up-to-date user research: Current data on ICPs, personas, messaging, and industry benchmarks.
- Cohesive strategy: A fully mapped buyer journey with assigned channels, interdepartmental responsibilities, and designated tools.
- Sales and marketing alignment: Shared goals focused on business outcomes, individual accountability, and joint responsibilities.
- Integrated CRM systems and data lake: Automatic logging of all customer interactions (that keeps track of historical data), accessible across departments, with data lakes for formatting and backup.
- Advanced analytics platforms: Real-time tracking (through your CRM or other tools) of customer behavior across all touchpoints.
- Collaboration tools: Facilitating communication between sales, marketing, and customer service teams.
- Dedicated tech tool expertise: Professional management and troubleshooting of triggers and sequences for each department and campaign.
If your organization can implement all these elements — and do it well — you'll be well-equipped to launch and maintain an omnichannel marketing strategy that grows your business.
Omnichannel marketing campaign example
Here we present a brief Belkins case study to showcase the results a well-orchestrated omnichannel approach can yield for businesses in the tech sector.
Campaign overview
We implemented a 3-month omnichannel campaign for our client specializing in cloud migration services. The target audience was C-level executives and IT decision-makers in midsize to enterprise companies.
Key components
The campaign leveraged three primary channels:
- LinkedIn outreach: Personalized connection requests and follow-up messages
- Email sequences: A 4-touch email campaign with tailored content
- Phone calls: Targeted follow-ups to engaged prospects
This allowed us to engage potential clients through their preferred communication channels, which not only improved reach but engagement as well.
Results
Our omnichannel strategy delivered the following outcomes:
- 150 qualified leads generated
- 25 sales appointments scheduled
- 5 closed deals within the campaign period
- 18% response rate on LinkedIn outreach
- 22% open rate and 3.5% click-through rate on email campaigns
Through careful integration of multiple touchpoints, expert timing, and tailoring content to each channel, we created a cohesive and effective campaign that resonated with their target audience at every stage of the buyer journey.
Omnichannel vs. multichannel by industry
Another way to understand the differences between omnichannel and multichannel marketing is to compare examples across business sectors.
Manufacturing
Multichannel campaign: Hitachi High-Tech Analytical Science provides an excellent example of a multichannel marketing campaign in the manufacturing industry. The company implemented a comprehensive content strategy that spans various channels, including their website, YouTube, and email marketing.
The campaign's scope included a range of content types, such as case studies, guides, blog posts, product demos, and webinars, covering over 21 applications of their products. Their strategy included high-quality, multichannel content that integrates different formats. For instance, their white papers often include original YouTube videos, while case studies are presented as short blog posts with links to full PDF versions.
Their campaign resulted in increased engagement and lead generation, as evidenced by their well-organized Learning Hub page and the use of email capture prompts for accessing certain content.
Omnichannel campaign: A prominent example of omnichannel marketing in the manufacturing industry is Caterpillar's "Built For It" campaign. This global initiative showcased the durability and versatility of Caterpillar's heavy equipment across digital and traditional (offline) channels.
Caterpillar mixed social media, online videos, interactive website experiences, mobile apps, and in-person demonstrations at trade shows and dealerships. They created a series of viral videos showing their machines performing impressive feats, which were shared across multiple platforms.
They even developed an augmented reality app that allows potential customers to visualize Caterpillar equipment in their own work environments. This was complemented by targeted email marketing, personalized web content, and coordinated messaging across dealer networks.
The "Built For It" campaign improved consistency in Caterpillar's brand messaging across every touchpoint, resulting in a highly unified customer experience.
The difference: While Hitachi's goal was primarily to increase engagement and lead generation through information provision, Caterpillar's objective was to create a unified brand experience.
SaaS
Multichannel campaign: Semrush increased reach and brand awareness while converting visitors into paying subscribers. The campaign employed a landing page, gamification, and video content to create a comprehensive user experience.
A central component was a short video communicating the brand's values and ideals, which garnered over 2 million views on YouTube alone. Semrush also developed a personality quiz to connect with their audience on a deeper level and created an interactive game to boost engagement. To maximize reach, the campaign was translated into five languages.
The results of this multichannel approach were significant, with an increase in website visitors and a boost in subscriber numbers. The campaign's success can be attributed to its consistent graphic design and messaging, which reinforced Semrush's image as a reliable and innovative company.
Omnichannel campaign: HubSpot's omnichannel campaign serves as a good example of seamlessly integrated channels, including email, social media, blogs, webinars, and personalized website experiences.
The strategy included the use of data to personalize experiences, such as targeted email workflows and dynamic website content based on user behavior. HubSpot also included educational resources like blogs and webinars to nurture leads while maintaining consistent branding and messaging across platforms.
HubSpot has built a loyal customer base and achieved massive traffic growth by maintaining alignment with user needs at every stage of the buyer's journey.
The difference: Semrush's multichannel campaign and HubSpot's omnichannel strategy differ in how they initially engaged customers and managed ongoing interactions.
Semrush relied on separate, creative initiatives to attract and engage users independently, with the primary goal of broadening reach and boosting subscriber numbers.
HubSpot, conversely, interconnected channels and touchpoints to guide users through personalized experiences. This let HubSpot focus not only on attracting users, but on nurturing leads and building long-term relationships.
How Belkins implements omnichannel into your existing marketing efforts
If growth is your goal, then you won't see the consistency in leads and sales you need if you rely solely on outbound, inbound, or single-channel. You also won't see the efficiency to drive cost down and ROI up without an overarching, cohesive strategy across multiple channels.
However, here's something you may not realize about omnichannel campaigns. When Belkins’ founder, Michael Maximoff, was in conversation with PandaDoc's CFO, Keith Rabkin, Michael asked if setting the stage for long-term gains or getting immediate results was more desirable to the tech company.
The CFO’s answer: “I need the quick win.”
While this may come as a surprise, this sentiment reflects the urgency that most of our clients express while integrating campaigns into their current marketing efforts.
In our view, every mid-sized and enterprise-level B2B company should have begun investing in omnichannel marketing a year ago. In 2025, it won't be a choice anymore; it will be a must.
If you choose to outsource, our process starts by evaluating your current channels and campaigns. We then identify opportunities to integrate additional supporting channels that amplify your current campaigns and deliver the early wins to build essential confidence and momentum.
By collaborating with Belkins, you'll transform your existing marketing efforts into a cohesive omnichannel strategy and achieve your growth goals.
